Pages

Monday, November 17, 2014

Read: JJ's Science Adventure: Magnets (Review and Giveaway)

Junior J loves science, and loves reading about various science topics. So he was most interested when he spotted this copy of "JJ's Science Adventure: Magnets". In fact, he found the book amidst my pile of letters on the table and helped himself to it, and even asked me when I would read it to him.

JJ's Science Adventure is a series of educational comic books authored by Aurelia Tan, and educator, and published by Harvest Edutainment. The books are designed to help readers to master learning objectives in the Primary School Science syllabus, by engaging readers in stories that introduce various scientific concepts.

In the title on Magnets, we follow two children, Joyce and Jonathon, as they journey into the world of Magnets via a teleportation portal. As they continue on their adventure, they learn to solve the puzzles and challenges that they encounter. Readers learn more about magnets, about their physical properties (eg. how certain metals are magnetic, and about the poles of the magnet), and their various applications (eg. maglev trains and electromagnets).

I was rather impressed by how Aurelia managed to weave most of the learning points for the topic into an adventure story. The puzzles encountered by the two children are interesting (for example, having to cross a gap using magnetic gloves with polarity). Incorporating all these puzzles into a cohesive story made learning so much more relevant and exciting, compared to if the concepts were presented in the usual textbook format. There are bite-sized chunks of information introduced along the course of the story, with more information on the various applications of magnets at the back of the book.

Junior J enjoyed the book very much, and I would say the series would definitely engage children, especially with those animated illustrations typical of comic books. We paired the book with various hands-on activities involving magnets: the boys got to see how like poles repelled each other, they picked up paper clips with magnets, and also got to experiment with various metal discs to see what type of metals would be picked up by a magnet.

Of course, it must be said that using comics to teach Science has its limitations. While effectively covering the main teaching points for the topic, the book should ideally be paired with hands-on activities (as with all Science topics). Also, comic books predominantly cater to visual learners, since the text and illustrations go hand in hand in telling a story. I found that the impact of the book was lessened when I had to read it aloud to my three year old, so ideally this book would be more suitable for children who are already reading and can manage the simple text.

All in all, the book is highly recommended, and I'm looking forward to the next title on heat and light! If you are interested, you can purchase your copy from various sources, which are listed here.

~~~~~~~

Aurelia is kindly giving away copies of "JJ's Science Adventure: Magnets" to three readers of this blog! To enter in the giveaway, follow the instructions given in the Rafflecopter widget below. Don't forget to leave your name and email address in the comments section below, so that we can contact you if you win!

26 comments:

My daughter's classmate loaned her the Young Scientist to read and she was very "hooked" and I do hope she gets to win this as I hope it will spark her interest in Science from a young age! Thank you for this giveaway! Oh yes, she is currently 6 and will be going to Primary 1 next year! :)

In partnership with...

Read!

The usual copyright stuff.

All pictures in this blog are taken by me unless otherwise stated. Please do not reproduce the content or images from this site without permission, but do have fun trying out any of the crafts I've blogged about. :)